palm beach - fourth district court appeal ruling

8/10/2019 Palm Beach - Fourth District Court Appeal Ruling

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D ISTRICT COURT O F APPEAL O F T HE S TATE O F FLORIDA F OURTH D ISTRICT

July Term 2014

J.R., a child, Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,Appellee.

No. 4D13-2941

[ November 5, 2014 ]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, PalmBeach County; Kathleen J. Kroll, Judge; L.T. Case No. 13CJ001116AMB.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Jonathan Dodson, AssistantPublic Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Luke R.Napodano, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

T AYLOR , J.

J.R., a child, appeals the trial courts order finding him guilty ofpossession of marijuana, after denying his motion to suppress. Wereverse, because the evidence was obtained as a result of an unlawful stopand detention for truancy.

J.R. was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, less thantwenty grams. He filed a motion to suppress the marijuana that the officerseized from his pocket after frisking him and the statements the officerobtained after taking him into custody. At the hearing on the motion to

suppress, a West Palm Beach police officer testified that while patrollingin his vehicle on a school day around 8:15 in the morning, he observed J.R. at 47th Street and Broadway walking away from his bus stop withanother juvenile.

The officer knew J.R. because of previous encounters with him. Heknew that J.R., a fifteen-year old, attended school and that his bus stopwas at 50th Street and Manning, five blocks away. The officer watched


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J.R. with his binoculars and saw him walk up to a residence that he knewwas not J.R.s. Because the officers view was obstructed, he could not seewhether J.R. entered the residence, but he saw his companion wait on thestreet until J.R. joined him a few moments later. The two then continuedwalking east.

The officer stopped J.R. at 47th and Spruce. J.R., a minor, was holdinga package of cigars. The officer asked him why he had left the bus stopprior to the bus arriving. He testified that J.R. told him that he waswalking towards the bus stop, but the officer stated that this wasinconsistent with what he observed. The officer explained:

I initiated the stop based upon what I believe was truancy andI took the cigars from him and I patted him down for myprotection. And I saw - - I felt in his pocket what I believed tobe a knife, an open - - a closed buck knife. And when I pulledit from his pocket I saw that it was a knife and I had alsograbbed with my fingers what I would say is a nickel bag ofmarijuana or a small half gram bag of marijuana in a zip lock.

The officer took J.R. into custody and placed him in the back of his patrolcar. J.R. asked the officer if he was under arrest, whether the officer wastaking him home or to the Juvenile Assessment Center, and why hestopped him. The officer explained that he saw him walking up to a houseaway from the bus stop and he did not know what he was doing. J.R.responded that he bought weed at the house. He added that he and hisfriend were going to smoke the marijuana instead of going to school.

On cross- examination, the officer testified that J.R.s bus usually showsup around 8:15 a.m., which was the time he saw J.R. walking away fromthe bus stop. He acknowledged that he did not know whether the buscame before or after he stopped J.R. because he was busy following J.R.He also acknowledged that there were other bus stops in the area.Although the officer was not sure of the exact time when school started,he conceded that school could have started at 9:30 a.m.

J.R. argued that the evidence and his statements should be suppressedbecause there was no reasonable basis to stop him for truancy when hewas not yet absent from school . In addition, he argued that there wasno justification for the pat down that led to discovery of the marijuana.

The trial court denied J.R.s motion to suppress. After trial, the courtfound J.R. guilty of possession of marijuana, less than twenty grams,withheld adjudication of delinquency, and placed him on probation. J.R.appealed.


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The standard of review applicable to a motion to suppress requires anappellate court to defer to the trial courts factual findings bu t review legalconclusions de novo. State v. E.W. , 82 So. 3d 150, 151 (Fla. 4th DCA2012).

Section 984.13(1)(a), Florida Statutes (2013), states in relevant part:

(1) A child may be taken into custody:. . . .

(b) By a law enforcement officer when the officer hasreasonable grounds to believe that the child is absent from school without authorization or is suspended orexpelled and is not in the presence of his or her parentor legal guardian, for the purpose of delivering the childwithout unreasonable delay to the appropriate schoolsystem site.

(emphasis added).

In this case, the officer initiated a stop of a juvenile for truancy withoutreasonable grounds to believe that the child was absent from school.Although the officer may have believed that J.R. was planning to missschool based on his observations of J.R.s movements and location beforeschool started, section 984.13 does not authorize an officer to preemptivelydetain a child who may be plotting to skip school later. Here, the officerdetained the juvenile for truancy well over an hour before school wasscheduled to start. J.R. could not have been absent from school beforeit began or was scheduled to begin. Moreover, merely missing the buscould not be considered truancy where, as in this case, the officer did notknow whether J.R. had already missed the bus, or whether he could havetaken a bus at one of the multiple bus stops in the area or relied on someother means of getting to school that day.

The state relies on K.A.C. v. State , 707 So. 2d 1175 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998)to argue that a law enforcement officer may take custody of a child if theofficer has reasonable suspicion that the child is simply planning on beingtruant. However, the stat es reliance on K.A.C. is misplaced. There, the

Third District concluded that police officers had a well-founded suspicionthat K.A.C. was truant when they observed him walking away from theschool while all of the other children were walking toward scho ol. Id . at1176-77. Although the state argues an inference can be drawn that schoolhad not yet started because children were walking towards school at thetime, the opinion does not specify the time of day when K.A.C. was stopped


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or reveal whether school was already in session.

Because the officer in this case did not possess the requisite reasonablegrounds to believe that J.R. was truant when he stopped and detainedhim, and did not describe any circumstances or behavior on the part of

J.R. to justify the pat down, the trial court should have suppressed themarijuana and incriminating statements resulting from the unlawfulsearch and seizure as fruit of the poisonous tree. See Wong Sun v. UnitedStates , 371 U.S. 471, 487-88 (1963) (holding that all evidence obtainedfrom an illegal search and seizure was fruit of the poisonous tree simplybecause it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of thepolice).

Accordingly, we reverse the denial of the motion to suppress andremand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Reversed and Remanded.

WARNER and M AY, JJ., concur.

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Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

palm beach - fourth district court appeal ruling

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